Kieran Trippier swung his right boot at a corner. Deep it flew, floating in slow-motion, over the heads of most in the Liverpool box. Until suddenly, the slow-mo-immersion-experience was broken by a 6'7" man leaping into the air and thundering a header into the far corner. BAM! Newcastle United had the lead in the Carabao Cup final. It was an impossible goal, xG registering the chance at 0.03, the chance that anyone could generate that much power (and accuracy) from that far out being so minimal as to be almost absent. Big Dan Burn, though, isn't just anyone.
Now, the impossibility of the goal itself was perhaps best described by Liverpool coach Arne Slot, who was trying to explain why 5'8" Alexis Mac Allister was standing guard over under Burn: "Normally a player runs to the zone. Normally, and I think he's an exception, I've never seen in my life a player from that far away heading a ball with so much force into the far corner. Ninety-nine out of 100 times that will not lead to a goal. Credit to him, he's one of the few players that can score a goal from that distance with his head."
Big Dan Burn
Our first goal at Wembley for 25 years couldn't have been scored by anyone more fitting ���� pic.twitter.com/s4PKoYFl92
- Newcastle United (@NUFC) March 16, 2025
But it is the impossibility of Dan Burn being there to score it that makes it so special.
Born and brought up in Blyth, just 17 miles away from St. James Park, Burn grew up in Magpie black and white. Naturally, he joined the Newcastle United academy as a kid but was released at age 11. He then spent time playing locally at Blyth Town and Blyth Spartans while also staying on at school to study sports science and working part-time at his local Asda supermarket collecting shopping trollies.
His professional career since has been a study in what's possible if you just keep on keeping on. From league two to conference to being loaned across the championship to getting a proper break at Brighton, Burn fought on as centre-back and auxiliary left-back and general set-piece menace, till Newcastle United came calling. It was a call he'd never expected, though. When Saudi Arabia's PIF took over control of Newcastle, he had told his father, "That's that, Dad. They're never going to sign Brighton's Dan Burn."
But they did. Aged 30, the boyhood fan who watched the late great Bobby Robson's team under the lights and worshipped Alan Shearer was going to be wearing Newcastle black and white. When Burn, and Newcastle, reached the Carabao Cup final in 2023 his father penned a lovely letter to his son talking about their shared love for the club, his pride in the man his son had grown up to be, talking about how Dan had been sat on his shoulders the last time Newcastle had made a Wembley final. In 2024, he got to see his son give their team the lead in another final. And that just days after he'd been called up to the England squad for the first time, at 33 years old.
As Callum Wilson put it to Burn junior after the match, "If Carlsberg did careers..."
In the final itself, Burn's was a goal that had been coming, Newcastle dominating Liverpool for the first half, but the goal, and the scorer, made it that extra bit special. Alexander Isak then made it two in the second half with a high-quality finish before Federico Chiesa's late goal made things nervy towards the end. Newcastle's defence -- marshalled by Dan Burn, of course -- held on admirably, though, ending their massive 70-year-old domestic title drought. The man of the match? The only locally born starter on either side.
Of course, this wasn't the classic case of David vs Goliath (regardless of how vastly different the two teams' trophy cabinets are) -- PIF's spending power has seen considerable investment going into the Newcastle squad, and their first XI at Wembley cost only about 30 million pounds less than Liverpool's (going by reported transfer fees). But even in this high-stakes, big-money world of modern football, the Carabao Cup final was a reminder that the sport can still come up with the most heartwarming stories. Just ask the Burns.
For his impossible goal, and immense man-of-the-match display in the Carabao Cup final for his boyhood club, Dan Burn takes our Moment of the Week.